MSM Still in Trouble–Also Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead

The annual look at the health of journalism by the Project for Excellence in Journalism was just released and the outlook is predictable: Those darn kids love the Internet even more.

In its latest report online, called the State of the News Media 2008, the PEJ cites several continuing trends: news has shifted from being a product to a service (news you can really use!); news Web sites are no longer final destinations (widgetize!); user-generated content is maybe not so valuable (I know–shocker!); newsrooms are becoming the most innovative and experimental parts of the business (by necessity); the news media agenda continues to narrow (by 2016, fyi, it will only cover Britney Spears); and Madison Avenue still has not gotten on board the online express (yet another shocker!).

More interesting, in the online news arena, while the same percentage of people go to the Web for news (71%), the percentage of those who do it on a regular basis has risen.

That might be promising for news sites, except that more of the ad dollars, whose rate of growth is slowing a bit, will be going to–guess who?–Web aggregators, most especially, Google (GOOG).

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